Delays in package processing

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2007-12-21 at 09:30 -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:17:18 +0100
> Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> 
> > > I tend to agree.  Then again, I'm in the position of doing all the
> > > pushes so I have a unique view upon it.  But it feels to me that
> > > packagers are all too eager to just release anything and everything
> > > across the releases, without regard to a 'stable release'.  
> > It won't surprise you that I can't avoid to disagree vehemently. What
> > you call "eager" in many cases is "bug-fixing across distros".
> 
> 
> Ralf, please don't confuse these things.
Rest assured, I don't confuse them - I feel you to be wanting to outlaw
updating packages in released distros in general.

>   I'm perfectly fine and
> encourage bugfixing across releases.  What I'm discouraging is version
> upgrades for new features or spurious builds for spec fixes and other
> unnecessary things that are done across the releases trees, not just on
> rawhide.
Of cause such things are happening, I don't deny them, but ... how can
you be sure these updates won't fix something you're not aware about?

When I have look at the embarrassing shape some packages are in (eg.
SELinux, evolution just to name a few), I can only conclude Fedora
doesn't see enough updates (Fortunately some devs seem to have learned
their lessons. Chapeau to mebrown who as I feel is doing a terrific job
on getting mock on FC8 in a stable shape).

>   These are the things that I don't like to see, and these are
> the things that lessen the value of a release.
The problem is: Except of trivial cases, they are very hard to recognize
to somebody who is not deeply familiar with a package.

My current favorite example: Why has doxygen not yet been upgraded on
Fedora 8? Shipping it for Fedora 8 doesn't directly fix anything in FC8
itself, except that it helps avoiding yum getting confused on
some-multilib related issues for packages which will be rebuilt during
FC8's life time, but ... 

The real benefit would happen outside of Fedora.

Ralf